The retail trade in Finland is very much centralized; the four major chains dominate the market. Mass marketing by making use of mass media and mass bargains has been very powerful in the past few years. Segmentation of the consumers by shop chains or by type of shop has occurred in a very small extent. Buying loyalty has decreased and people do shopping in several chains and and in several types of shops. Our survey shows that the customers of supermarkets in different chains differ very little from each other concerning sociodemographic and psychographic factors. Today and especially in the future it is more essential to study segmentation by benefits or situational segmentation. The choice of the shop can be effected by fast tepo special bargains and going over to an other type of shops happens easily. New shop groups that sell dry food stuff and non food-products have clearly taken customers from the traditional trade chains.
Why does GIRA recommend the development of specific products aimed at satisfying individual requirements, instead of manufacturing mass products attempting to satisfy the needs of the average consumer?
In this paper we describe a rather unusual decision support system which has been developed to help managers to take various kinds of resource allocation decisions, has a knowledge base which comprises causal models and it has an optimisation based inference engine. The knowledge base is parameterised by an interaction with one managers who feed in a combination of "hard" information and their own "gut-feel" . The system can be used for allocating, for example, space in retail outlets, pages A number of The system or more in mail order catalogues, sales forces, etc. practical examples are given of the use of the tool by managers of different companies for different kinds of allocation decisions.
This paper describes how the growing concentration of retail power has made it increasingly important for manufacturers to optimise their relations with their key customers in order to secure a more favourable position there. This need has stimulated the development of trade marketing covering customer service in the broadest sense from sales and administration to marketing support. Consequently manufacturers, who have previously relied solely on internal sources for a playback of what is happening in the trade, are now commissioning trade research as an aid to the formulation and appraisal of their trade marketing policies. The practical uses of this research into the manufacturer/trade relationship are illustrated by case histories on: - The communication and promotion of relative strengths compared with the competition; - Remedial action, where practical, on relative weaknesses, so as to improve standing with the trade.
The rate of retail competition is going to increase more rapidly. The ease with which sales and share gains can be made will decrease rapidly. So the need is urgent to analyse potential more carefully, and to meet it. This requires a much deeper understanding of people. Macro aggregate norms and trends must be reduced to households, shopping trip sales opportunities, and individual trip purchases and spend. We know the basic laws governing the achievement of optimum retail potential and the absolute numbers within which they operate. But we also, know that in-store practices often produce actual sales below potential. And EPOS may perpetuate these practices, apparently recording 'demand' perfectly - but not recording what didn't sell. There is much to be done in this area, as well as in analysing household and trip share trends. This paper discusses and illustrates the essential components.
The title of my assigned report is "Hypermarket's development in Italy". Since the total of these establishments, calculated with some generosity, is of about 20, we may immediately conclude that this development is anything but impressive. If we then take into account the fact that the first one was opened 13 years ago, we may observe that the average has been one per year and that in some lucky year we reached the total of 2. Someone could therefore suppose that this is a highly risky business, because such a slow development could be probably attributed to a supreme prudence of the Italian commercial entrepreneurs. But this is not the case, since hypermarkets are in general the most successful part of modern commerce in our Country.
This paper investigates the impact of scanner data on retailers and the uses retailers have made or can yet make of this data. Although scanners are used in many different retailer and wholesaler environments, the focus here is on the development of scanner information by grocery retailers, starting with a brief historical overview of the development in the U.S.A. Examples of specific grocery retail applications are given that show the based information, and indirectly scanner potential richness of scanner suggest some of the problems associated with generating and analyzing these data.
This paper proposes a new approach for manufacturers to deal more effectively with retailers and in the process gain competitive advantage in distribution. This paper will highlight the main factors contributing to the change in the balance between manufacturers and retailers. The issues and challenges facing the manufacturers will be broadly analysed. An approach for gaining competitive advantage in distribution from the manufacturer's standpoint will be proposed.
This paper reports the findings of a survey of views of members of the food chain in ten European countries. The survey was undertaken in early 1986 and respondents came from all sectors of the food chain. The purpose of the survey was to obtain forecasts of developments in the food chain over the next decade.
This paper examines the changes that have occurred in retailing formats and shopping environments in the last 100 years and highlights the increasing acceleration of that change. It considers the demographic factors in the UK which have impacted these changes and suggests how they will continue to do so. A major result of these changes has been the movement to tighter customer targeting and segmentation of the product offer and the development of specialty stores. In the future, it is argued, lifestyle factors may become even more important than socioeconomic factors with new values dictating the segmentation directions of the 21st century.
Yugoslavia nowadays has a powerful textile and garments industry which is relatively evenly spread throughout her territory and which unites more than a hundred years of experience on the one hand, and energy and initiative of a young industry on the other. Recent developments in this industry have been in the function of domestic demand and exports. Domestic demand, in its turn, is determined primarily by the standard of living and structural changes in personal consumption.
The paper considers general trends of structural change in terms of averages per type of trade. It consists of two parts. The first paper is descriptive, and gives an international comparison of trends concerning average shop size, number of shops per 1.000 inhabitants, the share of independents and concentration in the general food trade. The second paper is more analytical, and considers underlying causes of structural change in terms of productivity and profit. The analysis of productivity focusses on economies of scale, and briefly considers the effects of an extension of shopping hours. The analysis of profits considers the factors that determine average margin per type of trade. The results are used to explain trends of increasing scale, concentration and the declining share of independents.